Academics

Connections 23014. Film and Society

Increasingly, fictional film is used as a lens to view the social dynamics of the society that produced the film. Analysts, critics and theorists rely on a variety of conceptual frameworks and models to interpret, analyze and assess these texts and the history of their production and audience reception. These approaches include film studies, culture studies and criticism in the humanities, and content and thematic analysis in the social sciences, as well as philosophic investigations of the arguments made in film.

This connection enables students to explore various aspects of this rich field in different national cinemas. In the First-Year Seminar, The Dreams We See, offered every year, students learn how to analyze selected American box office hits from over the last century as primary historical documents.

In FR 246, students learn to distinguish between modes of representation like realism, surrealism and subjective narratives to see how they reinforce or resist paradigms of class, gender or nationalism. For RUSS 282, it is a given that Russian film reflects sociopolitical issues–as well as artistic and philosophical issues: students explore what artistic choices film-makers made to translate these issues to the screen. In ITAS 320, students examine how works by major Italian film directors respond to aesthetic and cultural debates and reflect the Italian sociohistorical context.

What is implied by the expression “the seventh art”? How have French directors both resisted and appropriated the dominant Hollywood formula? How have they challenged social, political and sexual norms? In what ways have French directors influenced world cinema? A survey of classic films from the silent period, Poetic Realism, the New Wave, and more […]

This course examines the women of German cinema, as filmmakers, as subjects of male filmmakers, and as spectators. While each film will be explored in relation to the sociohistorical, politicocultural and aesthetic contexts of its production, the primary focus will be on the image and representation of the female body and agency and the principal […]

This course offers an overview of the history of German cinema from 1919 until the present. Students will be introduced to the political, economic, and social conditions of Germany during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the post-war and post-wall era. As we study the larger socio-historical and cultural context of the films, we will […]

This course offers an overview of the history of German cinema from 1919 until the present. Students will be introduced to the political, economic, and social conditions of Germany during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the post-war and post-wall era. As we study the larger socio-historical and cultural context of the films, we will […]

This course introduces students to Italian cinema, film analysis and 20th century Italian history (including fascism, war, the “economic miracle” of the 1960s and migration). We will study cinematic techniques and styles through close visual readings of films by Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, Wertmüller, Bertolucci and others. We will see how these films […]

The course will acquaint you with the culture of modern Russia through its cinema. Lectures with discussion and analysis of a series of Russian films from Eisenstein to current productions, emphasizing content and moral/political issues as well as artistic technique.

Film has long been an important means of artistic expression in Germany. From its beginnings, it has reacted to social and political trends that concern the country and its citizens. This course examines major developments of German cinema throughout the twentieth century. We will get an overview of important movements, directors, genres, stars, etc. in […]